This invention relates to the field of industrial and agricultural work implements, such as front loaders and blades, and more specifically the mounting system for mounting commercially available, standard agricultural and industrial work implements to pick up truck and other non-tractor conventional vehicles.
The use of work implements such as front-end loaders, personnel lifts, fork lifts, post hole diggers, and grading blades is ubiquitous throughout society. Implements of any considerable size require a source of power to push, pull, or generally move the implement, and often require a source of hydraulic power, the obvious exceptions being smaller, manual implements such as a hand-held shovel or post hole digger. Most are designed to be mounted on and used with tractors of various sizes, ranging from small garden tractors to large farm tractors of 150 HP or larger.
As the economics of agriculture change, the need to improve efficiencies throughout farming operations grows. Costs of fuel, equipment, land, fertilizer, feed, and other agricultural components continue to rise without a commensurate rise in the price of agricultural commodities such as beef, pork, cotton, corn, soybeans, grain sorghum, etc. In balance, farmers of all sizes and varieties are forced to reduce costs wherever possible. Farmers will typically have a plurality of tractors which vary in size. The larger tractors usually being used for jobs requiring substantial power such as breaking soil, cultivating and tilling row crops, and harvesting crops. Smaller tractors might be used for moving hay bales, digging post holes, digging trenches, grading turn rows, or moving and loading small quantities of top soil, gravel, or caleche.
In none-agriculture industries and businesses, many of the same economic pressures exist. With rising costs and increasing emphasis on fuel economy and raw material conservation, it is important to avoid duplication of equipment wherever possible. In many types of businesses a pickup or flat bed truck-type vehicle is needed for carrying cargo. At times there may be an additional need for typically truck mounted implements such as a fork lifts, personnel lifts or clamp trucks. The invention disclosed herein provides for a pickup truck to be equipped with an off-the-shelf front end loader apparatus which can then be fitted with commercially available off-the-shelf attachments providing for the front end loader to be used as a fork lift, personnel lift, or clamp truck, thus eliminating the need to purchase that fork lift, clamp truck or personnel lift at significant cost.
Commercial tractor-borne front end loaders generally fall within two categories: in-line and short-line. In-line loaders are typically manufactured for specific tractors or series of tractors and usually manufactured by the same company which manufactures the tractor. For example, a Ford front end loader manufactured for a Ford model 300 or 300 series tractor. By contrast, short-line loaders are typically manufactured to be compatible with a wide variety of tractors and require a mounting kit that provides for mating. A countless number of mounting kits is currently commercially available. This is necessitated by the number of short-line tractor-mounted equipment manufacturers coupled with the number of tractors manufacturers, both domestic and imported.
Others have proposed implements for use in truck beds where the implements are removable when not in use, but these devices have generally required special modifications of the truck frame and/or bed and interfere noticeably with the cargo-carrying capacity of the vehicle. Another limitation of currently available devices has been the general requirement for special equipment to assist in loading and unloading these implements, thus limiting versatility.
More importantly, currently available implements which do not require significant modification to the host vehicle and which do not impede the cargo-carrying capacity of the host vehicle unfortunately consist of implements which are designed specifically for that host vehicle, and thus do not allow the use of third-party, short-line implements.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,883,020 to Dehn discloses a truck mounted implement carrying frame which can be loaded and unloaded without requiring significant modification to the host vehicle. However, any implement used in conjunction with the Dehn frame must be manufactured specifically for use with the Dehn frame, not only limiting available implements, but likely increasing the cost of each implement, as custom-built implements are required.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system and method to mount commercially-available agricultural and industrial implements to a pickup truck. There exists a further need in the art for this system and method to allow the mounting of so-called short-line implements through the use of available adapter kits. Additionally, there exists a need in the art for a system and method such as this which does not require significant modifications to the host pickup truck, and especially avoids modifications which may impede or reduce the normal cargo carrying capability of the pickup truck. Further, there is a need in the are for this system and method to preferably allow the system to be installed and de-installed from the host pickup truck by a single operator in order to realize maximum usefulness in a small farm or industrial situation. There is an additional need in the art for this system to provide power to the implement, hydraulic or otherwise, to allow the implement to be operated and used similarly as if it were mounted to a tractor.
The system and method of the invention provide a frame which, when mounted to a common pickup truck bed, receives commercially available xe2x80x9coff-the-shelfxe2x80x9d short-line implements, such as loaders, and the wide variety of commercially available implements designed for use therewith. The frame mounts to the pickup using common trailer hitch means, including a goose neck hitch and bumper- or frame-mounted square hitch receivers, thereby avoiding unusual and custom modifications to the pickup truck that may interfere with its capacity to haul cargo when not in use with an implement. Equipment such as front-end loaders and various attachments for front-end loaders such as fork lifts and personnel lifts can be mounted and used.
Thus, the invention allows many of the jobs currently done by small tractors to be done with a common pickup truck. Through use of the invention, farmers may improve their operating economics by eliminating redundant equipment, and making greater use of equipment they already own such as pickup trucks and tractor implements.